Populous The Beginning

A much more visually and technically advanced take on the Populous theme. Actually it brought Populous properly into the RTS genre. It was a fantastic team lead and inspired by Alan Wright. All in all a very enjoyable project. I left E.A. to join the Lionhead Studios start-up before the game's completion but I can fairly consider myself to have been the art lead on the team.

I understand that people are still playing POP3 (as we referred to it) today, which is very satisfying if a bit crazy.

Hi Octane

This shameless reuse of the Magic Carpet engine resulted in us getting a new title out in an amazing 6 weeks. It was visually more interesting than Carpet even if the game was less innovative. I really enjoyed retrofitting in some more hardcore graphics into an engine written for a much softer experience. I was also quite proud my console box cover, it was probably the first time I was able to create a CG visual without fighting the tools and I'm still very happy with it.

Theme Park

Believe it or not this pretty much set a new paradigm for gaming. There are sooo many derivative titles it's amazing. I guess the graphics were functional and reasonably memorable but, once again, it's hard to be excited now.

It was hoped that the Theme series would form a major franchise for Bullfrog but apart from 'Theme Park 2', the extraordinarily successful 'Theme Hospital' was the only other addition. Also considered were Theme Airport and Theme Prison !

Magic Carpet

It's 1994 and finally were into 3D game engines. That'll either be a really significant landmark to you or you will juat have assumed they were always there. This was a great team to work with and the game justly deserves it's place in the favourite lists. Graphically it was pretty liberating (for the time) but in many respects I felt as if I was reworking Populous again. Lots of interesting technical challenges however and it really felt like we were pioneering developers.

We went on to do Magic carpet 2 in 1995. This had all new graphics and some evolved gameplay but was pretty much more of the same. Great if you were a fan as, presumably, that's exactly what you wanted. 

Syndicate

Lot's of people have fond memories of this 1994 game, it still actually has quite a cult following and, for whatever reason, is the old-skool game that still earns me some kudos.
For me at the time it was great to dabble in cyberpunk and work in hi-res (640 x 480, you know, like on that mobile phone you just junked) even if it meant only using 16 colours as a result. I think the wrapper screens and cut-scenes still have some creative merit even if technically they make me cringe.

Many thanks to Tomasz lis for putting this excellent resource together: http://syndicate.lubie.org/synd/html/synd_main.php simply amazing.

Populous 2

This was a much anticipated title in it's day. Pop 1 had created a new genre, had enticed me into Bullfrog Studios in the UK (I was in Ireland previously) so working on this sequel was important to me. I think it was a reasonably turned out effort. Nothing much to speak of graphically other than it was tidy and had I believe the first rendered CG intro to a game (it's shockingly poor!!). I couldn't find anything in the annals to support that assertion so we can wrestle over it if you like.